Zarevka

!DISCLAIMER!

This article features a conlang made completely by AI! Zarevka is a conlang made by Claude by Anthropic, with asstistance from user Sush1BS (publification, documentation), as a form of an experiment. Sush1BS takes no claim to ownership of the conlang. This entire article was also made fully by AI with the exception of this disclaimer.

Zarevka
Zarevka
Pronunciation	[/za.ˈrev.ka/]
Created by	–
Date	2025
Setting	Mountain conlang; fictional world
Ethnicity	Drevak
Native speakers	— ({{{date}}})
Early form	Proto-Drevak (unattested; reconstructed from intra-etymology)
Official status
Official language in	—
Regulated by	—

Zarevka (/za.ˈrev.ka/; endonym: Zarevka — lit. "the domain/practice of voice") is a constructed language created by Sush1BS in 2025. It is the language of the Drevak, a fictional mountain people whose culture, lore, and oral tradition are developed in parallel with the language itself. The name Zarevka is a compound of the root zar- ("voice, speech, sound") and the nominalising suffix -evka ("the domain or practice of"), making it cognate in spirit to real-world language names such as Georgian kartuli (from kartveli, the people).

Zarevka is a typological isolate — it does not descend from any real language — but its design sensibility is deeply informed by the Caucasian language area, particularly Georgian as its primary model, with secondary influence from Chechen and Abkhaz. It is a Subject–Object–Verb language with an agglutinative-to-fusional morphology, a large consonant inventory including ejectives, and an original script of its own design.

The language has an established lexicon of over 760 entries, a developing grammar system documented through the translation of Genesis 1:1–5, and a fully functional font distributed as a TrueType file.

Classification

Zarevka is classified as a fictional naturalistic conlang: it is designed to resemble a language that could plausibly have evolved naturally among a real people, rather than being engineered for logical regularity or international communication. Its design priorities are:

Phonological richness (large consonant inventory, ejectives, front rounded vowels)
Internal etymological consistency (most vocabulary is derived from a small set of documented roots)
Typological plausibility (SOV order, postpositions, genitive-before-noun, verb-final tense marking)
Cultural embeddedness (lexicon and grammar reflect Drevak mountain life and oral tradition)

The closest real typological relatives are the Kartvelian languages (particularly Georgian), the Northeast Caucasian languages (Chechen, Ingush), and the Northwest Caucasian languages (Abkhaz, Kabardian), none of which are genealogically related to one another. This mirrors the historical situation of the Caucasian language area, where typological convergence occurred without common ancestry.

The Drevak people

The Drevak (/ˈdre.vak/) are the fictional mountain people who speak Zarevka. The ethnonym is a genuine proper noun of opaque etymology — folk tradition among the Drevak derives it from a very old root meaning "those of the high place," though this is considered uncertain. The language Zarevka takes its name not from the people but from a description that became a proper noun through use, much as Romance languages take their name from Latin Romanicus.

The Drevak inhabit deep mountain valleys and high passes. This geographical isolation explains several features of the language: the large consonant inventory (isolation tends to preserve and elaborate consonant distinctions), the front-weighted stress system (initial-syllable prominence aids comprehension across distance), and the rich system of compounding (limited borrowing from neighbours requires internal word formation). Their strong oral tradition — the velzarevka, literally "the practice of many voices" — explains why the language's most culturally significant vocabulary cluster around speech, sound, memory, and stone.

Phonology

Consonants

Zarevka has a large consonant inventory of 34 phonemes, organised by place and manner of articulation. A defining feature is the presence of a full series of ejective stops and affricates alongside their plain counterparts, consistent with the Caucasian typological area.

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Lateral	Postalveolar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Plain plosive	p b		t d			k g	q
Ejective plosive	p'		t'			k'	q'
Plain affricate			ts dz		tʃ dʒ
Ejective affricate			ts'		tʃ'
Fricative		f v	s z	ɬ	ʃ ʒ	x	ɣ	h
Nasal	m		n
Approximant	w			l
Trill			r

Notes:

/ɬ/ is the voiceless lateral fricative, as in Welsh ll or Zulu hl; romanised ⟨ł⟩
/x/ is the voiceless velar fricative, as in Scottish English loch; romanised ⟨x⟩ (new system) or ⟨kh⟩ (old digraph)
/ɣ/ is the voiced uvular fricative; romanised ⟨ġ⟩
/q/ is the voiceless uvular stop, further back than /k/
The glottal stop /ʔ/ appears predictably as a hiatus-breaker between vowels and is not phonemic; it can be written ⟨ʔ⟩ as a standalone particle
Ejectives are marked with an apostrophe in all romanisation systems: ⟨p' t' k' q' c' č'⟩

Vowels

Zarevka has a seven-vowel system: five core vowels plus two front rounded vowels.

	Front unrounded	Front rounded	Back
Close	i	ü /y/	u
Mid	e	ö /ø/	o
Open	a

Long vowels are written double in romanisation: ⟨aa⟩, ⟨ee⟩, etc.
No diphthongs; hiatus is resolved by /ʔ/
The language is non-tonal; prosodic complexity resides in the consonant system

Stress

Stress falls on the first heavy syllable (a syllable with a long vowel or closed coda). If no heavy syllable is present, stress defaults to the first syllable. This produces the characteristic front-weighted rhythm of Zarevka words, which the Drevak associate with "the way a call carries across a valley."

Phonotactics

Syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C)(C), allowing up to two consonants at onset and coda. Key phonotactic constraints:

Ejectives cannot cluster with one another
Voiced and voiceless obstruents do not cluster across a syllable boundary
/ɬ/ does not appear in coda position

Romanisation

Zarevka uses its own script (see below) as the primary writing form. The romanisation is a scholarly transliteration system used in linguistic documentation and in this article. The current system uses single characters with diacritics, avoiding digraphs wherever possible.

Romanisation	IPA	Notes
p b t d k g q	/p b t d k g q/	Plain plosives, direct correspondence
f v s z h	/f v s z h/	Fricatives, direct correspondence
š	/ʃ/	Postalveolar fricative; formerly ⟨sh⟩
ž	/ʒ/	Voiced postalveolar fricative; formerly ⟨zh⟩
x	/x/	Velar fricative; formerly ⟨kh⟩
ġ	/ɣ/	Voiced uvular fricative; formerly ⟨gh⟩
ł	/ɬ/	Voiceless lateral fricative; unchanged
c	/ts/	Alveolar affricate; formerly ⟨ts⟩
ż	/dz/	Voiced alveolar affricate; formerly ⟨dz⟩
č	/tʃ/	Postalveolar affricate; formerly ⟨ch⟩
j	/dʒ/	Voiced postalveolar affricate; unchanged
p' t' k' q' c' č'	/p' t' k' q' ts' tʃ'/	Ejectives; apostrophe retained
m n l r w	/m n l r w/	Sonorants, direct correspondence
a e i o u	/a e i o u/	Core vowels
ü	/y/	Close front rounded
ö	/ø/	Mid front rounded

Script

Zarevka is written in an original abugida — a script in which consonants are primary letters and vowels are diacritics written above the preceding consonant. This is consistent with the phonological reality of the language, where consonants carry grammatical weight and vowels modify them. The script was designed to reflect the Drevak's material culture: it is angular and stroke-based, as if carved into stone or wood rather than brushed or inked, and every glyph is systematically constructed from a small set of components.

Design system

Each consonant glyph is built from two layers:

1. Spine shape — encodes place of articulation:

Horizontal bar (—) → bilabial
Vertical bar (|) → alveolar
Fork shape (⋏) → postalveolar
Diagonal (\) → velar/uvular
Dot (●) → glottal

2. Manner mark — a secondary stroke added to the spine:

No addition → plain plosive
Crossing tick → fricative
Double crossing tick → affricate
Downward hook → nasal
Side branch → approximant/lateral
Two side branches → trill
Detached dot above → ejective

This means that a reader who knows the system can decode an unfamiliar glyph by reading its components. The voiced counterpart of any consonant is indicated by a short serif stroke at a position characteristic of its place: left-end serif for bilabials, foot serif for alveolars, head serif for velars/uvulars.

Vowel diacritics

Vowels are diacritics placed above the preceding consonant. When a vowel appears word-initially (with no preceding consonant), it is written on a short carrier stroke.

Vowel	Diacritic form	Standalone (word-initial)
a	Single dot above	Dot on carrier stroke
e	Horizontal dash above	Dash on carrier stroke
i	Vertical tick above	Tick on carrier stroke
o	Small open circle above	Circle on carrier stroke
u	Downward hook above	Hook on carrier stroke
ü	Dot + right curl above	Dot-curl on carrier stroke
ö	Dash + right curl above	Dash-curl on carrier stroke

Long vowels are written by doubling the diacritic. The word separator is a thin vertical stroke (similar to the Ethiopic wordspace ፡), rather than a space. Quotation is marked by angular bracket glyphs.

Writing direction and word boundaries

Zarevka is written left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Words are separated by a thin vertical divider stroke rather than a blank space, which reflects the Drevak oral tradition of continuous speech with clearly marked boundaries.

Font

A TrueType font (Zarevka-Regular.ttf) has been developed, mapping the Zarevka script glyphs to standard keyboard keys. The font uses polygon-based outlines (no bezier curves) consistent with the angular, carved aesthetic of the script. It includes 61 glyphs with contours covering all consonants, vowels, ejectives, punctuation, and Zarevka numeral forms.

Grammar

Typological overview

Zarevka is a Subject–Object–Verb language with the following typological features:

SOV word order in all clause types
Verb-final tense and mood marking
Postpositions rather than prepositions
Genitive before the governed noun (possessor precedes possessed)
Adjectives follow the noun they modify
Agglutinative morphology with some fusional elements in the verb
No grammatical gender on nouns (consistent with Georgian)
No articles (definite/indefinite distinction is contextual)

Word order

The canonical word order is Subject – Object – Verb. All modifiers precede their heads within the noun phrase. Postpositions follow the noun phrase they govern.

van zarek tok gloqval — lit. "I river that see" → I see that river

ghozan-vel drovan k'arzvash — lit. "divine earth made" → the divine made the earth

When the subject is recoverable from context or verb agreement (in future work), it may be dropped. The copula zhoqal ("to be/exist") can also be dropped in simple present equational sentences, as in Russian and Hebrew:

drovan velak — lit. "earth full" → the earth is full (copula omitted)

drovan dovan zhoqvash — lit. "earth empty was" → the earth was empty (copula retained in past)

Tense

Tense is marked by suffixes on the verb. The verb root typically ends in -val (intransitive/stative) or -eval (transitive/active). Tense modifies this ending:

Tense	Suffix	Example: gloqval (to see)
Present	-val / -eval (base)	gloqval — sees
Past	-vash / -evash	gloqvash — saw
Future	-vanel / -evanel	gloqvanel — will see

The past suffix -vash is etymologically linked to varash (fire) — the past is what has already burned. The future suffix -vanel echoes van-el (the collective "we") — what is yet to come belongs to all.

Further examples:

zareval → zarevash → zarevanel (to speak → spoke → will speak)

meraval → meravash → meravanel (to walk → walked → will walk)

draveval → draveevash → draveevanel (to eat → ate → will eat)

Mood

Jussive

The jussive ("let there be X") is formed by adding the suffix -ak to the bare verb stem (the root without -val). This is attested in the Genesis translation and reflects the Drevak ritual use of -ak as a realisation/completion marker already present in the nominal lexicon.

ghozar zhoq-ak — lit. "light let-exist" → let there be light

noshan zhoq-ak — let there be rain

zarevka zhoq-ak — let Zarevka exist

Parallel: Hebrew yehi (let there be); Latin subjunctive sit.

The genitive case

Possession and source are marked by the suffix -zan on the possessor noun. The possessor precedes the possessed noun. This suffix is also productive in colour and quality formation (varashzan "fire-coloured" → red; k'ezzan "sky-coloured" → blue).

ghozan-vel-zan zar — "divine-GEN voice" → the voice of the divine

vomak-vel-zan tsomek — "deep-GEN surface" → the surface of the deep

k'ezan-zan drelak — "sky-GEN peak" → the peak of the sky

Parallel: Georgian genitive in -is/-s; Turkish genitive in -ın/-in.

Adjective placement

Adjectives follow the noun they modify in predicative and attributive use:

drovan dovan — "earth empty" → the empty earth

ghozar meqan — "light good" → good light

k'ezan k'arzon — "sky great" → the great sky

Subordinate clauses

That-clauses are introduced by the complementiser mak-kel (literally "this-that"), placed before the embedded clause. The embedded clause retains full SOV order.

van gloqvash mak-kel ghozar meqan zhoqvash

"I saw that-COMP light good was" → I saw that the light was good

drev k'evalts mak-kel dravak vel

"he feared that-COMP forest large" → he feared that the forest was large

Parallel: Georgian rom; English that.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns established to date:

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	van	vanel
2nd	zan	zanel
3rd	drev	drevel

Interrogative pronouns:

k'al — who
k'et — what
k'esh — where (locative)
k'ezh — when (temporal)

Postpositions

Key postpositions established:

Postposition	Meaning	Example
-shan	at / in / on (locative)	zhoqmits-shan — "at the first moment" → in the beginning
drel	above / over	noshak drel — "darkness above"
vom	under / below	k'ashel vom — "under the leaf"
zel	towards / beyond	zarekzel — "across the river"
k'ez	from (ablative)	noshak k'ez — "from the darkness"
vel	with (comitative)	nakvel — "with a companion"

Conjunctions

Conjunction	Meaning
va	and
va2	or
dova	but / however
k'en	because
shozh	if (conditional)
zhoqeva	while / as (temporal)
k'enzel	so that (purposive)

Negation

Negation is expressed by the particle dova before the verb:

van dova gloqval — "I not see" → I do not see

drovan dova zhoqal — "earth not exists" → the earth does not exist

The privative prefix dova- is also used in nominal and adjectival formation:

dova-zelak — "not-shaped" → formless

dovazan — "not-straight" → dishonest

Lexicon

Size and structure

The Zarevka lexicon currently contains 763 entries organised across the following part-of-speech categories:

Category	Count (approximate)
Nouns	~340
Verbs	~220
Adjectives	~130
Adverbs	~35
Pronouns / determiners	~20
Conjunctions / prepositions / particles	~18
Numerals	~20

Etymology

All Zarevka vocabulary is tagged with one of five etymology codes:

Code	Meaning	Example
[G]	Georgian-inspired root	zareval (to speak) ← cf. Georgian zareba
[Ch]	Chechen-inspired root	shavan (ear) ← cf. Chechen lerg
[Ab]	Abkhaz-inspired root	(minor influence; phonological patterns)
[I]	Intra-etymological (derived from existing Zarevka roots)	zarevka ← zar- + -evka
[O]	Original (no external model)	ghozar (light/radiance)

The majority of the extended vocabulary beyond the Swadesh core is intra-etymological ([I]), built through systematic compounding and suffixation of a small set of documented roots. This gives the lexicon strong internal coherence — a learner who knows the roots can often reconstruct or predict a word's meaning.

Core roots

A small set of roots recurs throughout the lexicon:

Root	Core meaning	Derivatives (selected)
zar-	voice, sound, speech	zareval (to speak), zarevka (the language), zarevelak (speaking place), zar (inspiration)
k'ar-	hand, stone	k'arval (to cut), k'arvel (stone/rock), k'arzon (big/great), velk'ar (finger)
drev-	high place, height	drevak (mountain), drevak (the people), drevval (to breathe), drevak (courage)
gho-	sun, radiance	ghozan (sun/gold), ghozar (light), ghovelshan (summer)
nosh-	dark, night	noshak (darkness), noshvanek (evening), noshzan (night/dark age)
vel-	many, abundance	velak (full/plentiful), vanel (we), velzarevka (wisdom, lit. "many-voiced domain")
mits-	one, small, first	mitsak (small), mitsakel (first), mitszan (rarely), zhoqmits (beginning)
vom-	beneath, below	vomak (cave), vomval (to descend), vomakvel (the deep)
meq-	good	meqan (good adj.), meqak (joy), meqzak (awe/sacred), meqval (to recover)
dova-	not, negation	dovan (empty), dovazel (falsehood), dova-zelak (formless)

The Swadesh list

Zarevka has been systematically developed against the Swadesh 207-word list. All 207 concepts are covered in the lexicon. Selected entries:

English	Zarevka	IPA (approx.)	Etymology
I / me	van	/van/	[G]
water	shotsan	/ˈʃot.san/	[G]
fire	varash	/ˈva.raʃ/	[G]
stone	k'ar	/k'ar/	[I]
earth	drovan	/ˈdro.van/	[G]
sky	k'ezan	/ˈk'e.zan/	[O]
mountain	drevak	/ˈdre.vak/	[I]
river	zarek	/ˈza.rek/	[I]
to speak	zareval	/ˈza.re.val/	[I]
to see	gloqval	/ˈgloq.val/	[I]
good	meqan	/ˈme.qan/	[G]
big	k'arzon	/ˈk'ar.zon/	[O]
one	mits	/mits/	[G]
sun	ghozan	/ˈɣo.zan/	[I]
night	noshak	/ˈno.ʃak/	[I]

Sample text: Genesis 1:1–5

The following is a translation of the opening of Genesis, used as the primary text for developing Zarevka's grammar. It is the first extended text produced in the language.

Text

Verse	Zarevka	English gloss
1:1	zhoqmits-shan ghozan-vel k'ezan-vel va drovan k'arzvash	In the beginning, the divine made the skies and the earth.
1:2	drovan dova-zelak va dovan zhoqvash va noshak vomak-vel-zan tsomek-zan drel zhoqvash	The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was above the surface of the deep.
1:3	ghozan-vel zarevash: ghozar zhoq-ak — va ghozar zhoqvash	The divine spoke: let light exist — and light existed.
1:4	ghozan-vel gloqvash mak-kel ghozar meqan zhoqvash — va ghozar noshak k'ez velkvash	The divine saw that the light was good — and separated the light from the darkness.
1:5	ghozan-vel ghozar shotszan zarevash va noshak noshvanek zarevash — va noshvanek zhoqvash va shotszan zhoqvash — mitsakel shotszan	The divine named the light "day" and the darkness "night" — and there was evening and there was morning — the first day.

Grammatical notes on the text

Several grammatical features are illustrated in this passage:

SOV order: ghozan-vel drovan k'arzvash (divine earth made)
Copula drop: omitted in equational present; zhoqvash retained in past
Genitive -zan: vomak-vel-zan tsomek (surface of the deep)
Jussive -ak: ghozar zhoq-ak (let there be light)
Complementiser mak-kel: gloqvash mak-kel ghozar meqan zhoqvash (saw that the light was good)
Privative dova-: dova-zelak (formless, lit. "not-shaped")
Ablative k'ez: noshak k'ez velkvash (separated from the darkness)
Locative -shan: zhoqmits-shan (in the beginning)

Vocabulary coined for the Genesis translation

The following words were coined during the translation process and are now part of the established lexicon:

Zarevka	Meaning	Etymology
ghozan-vel	the divine / God	[I] gho-zan (sun-spirit) + vel (collective) — the sum of sky and voice
zhoqmits	the beginning / origin	[I] zhoq (present-moment) + mits (first)
ghozar	light / radiance	[I] gho (sun) + zar (voice/emanation)
dova-zelak	formless	[I] dova (not) + zelak (shaped/straight)
noshak	darkness	[I] nosh (dark) + ak (noun realiser)
velkvash	separated (past)	[I] velk (to split) + vash (past tense suffix)

Notes

External links

PolyGlot dictionary file available on request from Sush1BS
TrueType font (Zarevka-Regular.ttf) available on request from Sush1do